Dreamworld Maintenance 2021

[Cactus_Matt]

I'll say this much, as someone who hasn't been able to get back to the GC parks for a long while (not just because of Covid but other reasons) but who used to frequent them almost monthly when I lived up there, Dreamworld still has a lot of catching up to do with what it offers compared to what it had, and at its most basic that's a bad place to be. Even without the bad stigma from the TRRR losing SEVEN attractions in the space of as many years would be unthinkable except for the fact it happened. Adding a single coaster as a bandaid is all well and good, but they need to add another ride every year for the foreseeable future if they're wanting to recapture the 'magic' their park once had.

As for Movieworld, poor operations and maintenance issues aside closing the Loony Tunes River Ride was their biggest ever mistake imo. Every cent that went into things like Doomsday Destroyer and the revamp of Scooby Doo should have went into restoring and maintaining the Loony Tunes River Ride and I say this as someone who loathes nostalgia baiting. While there seems to be a few decently themed options in the park, they're almost at the point of worth going the Six Flags route and just investing in high capacity, expensive roller coasters to compliment Superman Escape, Green Lantern and DC Rivals rather than catering to families and expansive themed rides since they clearly don't care that much about them anymore.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I mean if you're going to count every closure in the last 7 years, you should probably count Sky Voyager alongside Taipan.

It's not much of an improvement, but its factual. 

Agree with pretty much everything else you've said here - Dreamworld has a lot of fucking work to do. I'm hopeful they've got the right team and tools to try.

Movieworld should have gone the SF route long ago. I also don't think they should be trying to compliment Green Lantern - from what I hear, that thing has been a dumpster fire of late.

[Baconjack]

7 hours ago, Cactus_Matt said:

While there seems to be a few decently themed options in the park, they're almost at the point of worth going the Six Flags route and just investing in high capacity, expensive roller coasters to compliment Superman Escape, Green Lantern and DC Rivals rather than catering to families and expansive themed rides since they clearly don't care that much about them anymore.

But isn't this the direction they have already gone in? When Fisher was around this is exactly what Village was doing at MW, milking the DC license to put in thrill rides with a minimal theme (Green Lantern, Doomsday and Rivals), and I'd be willing to bet that's what they will be doing when Arkham is replaced in a couple of years. 

The last true 'themed ride' they put in was Justice League and that was nearly 10 years ago. Village has positioned SW as a family park (which it always has been, of course, but it definitely is compared to what is up the road) while positioning MW as the park with all the big roller coasters. No point trying to mix both demographics in both parks when you can just sell them as separate ticketed experiences and make more money.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Baconjack

[Guest 239]

6 hours ago, Cactus_Matt said:

While there seems to be a few decently themed options in the park, they're almost at the point of worth going the Six Flags route and just investing in high capacity, expensive roller coasters to compliment Superman Escape, Green Lantern and DC Rivals rather than catering to families and expansive themed rides since they clearly don't care that much about them anymore.

I respectfully disagree because it's all about balance. Historically roller coasters are excellent when they're complimentary to a well-rounded theme park experience, but if you just focus on them then you risk isolating certain groups whilst attracting demographics that just aren't willing to pay what is required to operate a modern large-scale theme park. The numbers are heavily in the family-park model's favour considering out of the twenty-five most visited theme parks in the world in 2019, I'd consider three of them to be thrill parks and that's being generous with the label.  

Families just make bank for theme parks. Kids put a lot of pressure on parents, and then the extended family often tags along to enjoy the experience as well. Thrill rides are good for teenagers and young adults but generally they have less income to buy additional goods inside the park and are more tolerant to pushing through hunger so you just get very little out of them.

In saying that, @Baconjack makes a great point that the balance is well achieved across the entire company with Sea World filling in the family role and Movie World being the more 'grown up' park but I still think that balance is necessary when treating the parks as individual entities otherwise you risk relying on a something that is completely separated from you to pick up the slack of your shortcomings. Walt Disney World has four theme parks and they could have easily seperated them all out into a kids park, thrill park, entertainment park, etc. but each park easily stands on it's own as a full package and has a great balance of family and thrill rides meaning that everybody can have a great time every day no matter where they go. You don't want the grandparents and young kids dreading a trip to Movie World whilst the young adults and teenagers dread a trip to Sea World. 

[Cactus_Matt]

2 minutes ago, Dom said:

I respectfully disagree because it's all about balance. Historically roller coasters are excellent when they're complimentary to a well-rounded theme park experience, but if you just focus on them then you risk isolating certain groups whilst attracting demographics that just aren't willing to pay what is required to operate a modern large-scale theme park. The numbers are heavily in the family-park model's favour considering out of the twenty-five most visited theme parks in the world in 2019, I'd consider three of them to be thrill parks and that's being generous with the label.  

Families just make bank for theme parks. Kids put a lot of pressure on parents, and then the extended family often tags along to enjoy the experience as well. Thrill rides are good for teenagers and young adults but generally they have less income to buy additional goods inside the park and are more tolerant to pushing through hunger so you just get very little out of them.

I won't dispute that themed attractions are better, I've been to Tokyo Disneyland and Sea multiple times and almost any single large attraction is better than anything at any Australian park. That's not the issue, the issue is Movie World (and Dreamworld too, not just throwing shade at one park) will never spend the money theming something as well as a Disney park (and I'm sure you could argue that no one except Disney and Universal could afford to anyway). So if the move has been away from theming, then they need to go all-in on fixing up their heavy down-time rides (so Doomsday needs to go in the bin) and they should put all their money into high capacity coasters (B&M pls).

Family parks may indeed 'make bank' but they need to 'spend bank' to get them to be something at a level that doesn't seem cheap and throwaway otherwise you end up looking like Dreamworld; some weird hybrid of former thrill ride heavy park and mediocre themed family areas.

[Gazza]

2 hours ago, Baconjack said:

But isn't this the direction they have already gone in? When Fisher was around this is exactly what Village was doing at MW, milking the DC license to put in thrill rides with a minimal theme (Green Lantern, Doomsday and Rivals)

I think GL and DCR were a bit plain with the theming, but the Doomsday precinct was fully themed.

[joz]

With maybe one or two exceptions at each park, even the 'high thrill' rides at Disney are totally family friendly, but I think that's what their audience expect.

 

I think there has been a shift in the rest of the industry for a long time away from stuff with appeal across the board, to stuff with a very specific demo in mind, and I think that is a shame. It's part of the reason I think a shoot the chutes for DW would be a significantly better option than a power splash. It's about balance and I'm not sure any of the parks are really hitting that balance as well as they could.

 

MW is a strange one because are Wild West & Scooby genuine family attractions or are they too thrilling? What about Justice League, is it a family ride or not thrilling enough? Is Road Runner a family attraction?  If you count all of them as family rides combined with some of the lesser rides like Batwing & GL, the kiddie rides and shows you've got a great park for families! If those rides don't count as family friendly for you, then you've got some poor kids rides, like 3 shows and not much else. I think another genuine family ride for MW is needed (It doesn't have to be a big sprawling dark ride either, it could also be a family friendly flat ride in the kid's section), as well as they're getting due for another big coaster.

 

SW genuinely I can't work out it's mix until after new Atlantis opens. Leviathan is meant to be somewhat family friendly, but my suspicion is that it will probably satisfy more hardened thrill seekers too, and Trident isn't going to be super tall and intimidating, so I'll hold off on judgement and see how it fills out when those things open.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

31 minutes ago, Gazza said:

the Doomsday precinct was fully themed.

Albeit... dare I say.... BACKWARDS!

 

[Guest 239]

2 hours ago, Cactus_Matt said:

Family parks may indeed 'make bank' but they need to 'spend bank' to get them to be something at a level that doesn't seem cheap and throwaway otherwise you end up looking like Dreamworld; some weird hybrid of former thrill ride heavy park and mediocre themed family areas.

Surprisingly back in the day our parks actually did spend the money needed to keep up with the industry. When Longhurst constructed Dreamworld he worked with a lot of Disney designers to help on the park. Sea World consulted with Disney to construct Bermuda Triangle (but ended up building it in-house much cheaper than they recommended which is likely why the ride had such a short lifespan) and when designing Movie World they hired C. V. Wood who worked alongside Walt designing Disneyland. They knew that if you spend the premium money, you get a premium experience. 

Then came the good fun of the 'race to the bottom' after the turning millennia which gets us to where we are today. 

@joz I agree that Movie World is a family attraction or two away from being a solid family park but it could easily tip depending on what decisions they make in the future. I love the idea of Santa Monica Pier at Movie Park Germany (even though in execution its rather underwhelming) but something like that could be done on the Arkham plot. Build a small lake area and have a pier themed location with a Ferris Wheel, Chair Swing, and some sort of shuttle coaster. You could even double up on thrill + family with an Eccentric Ferris Wheel like at DCA and free up some land in the Wild West area by moving the games to this new pier area. 

I also agree that I have no idea what SW is and I'm not sure if it even knows. It has some great children's rides with the Nickelodeon area but they're catering a little too young to be well-rounded family attractions. I reckon that they need to find a suitable replacement for Viking's Revenge and then have something similar to Sea/Storm Rider at Tokyo DisneySea to fill out the line up. 

[Slick]

1 hour ago, Dom said:

When Longhurst constructed Dreamworld he worked with a lot of Disney designers to help on the park.

Contrary to popular belief, he never worked with Disney Imagineers. You can read about it when I interviewed him about it where he said point blank (and is referenced in my audio transcripts) that it never happened.

5 hours ago, Baconjack said:

When Fisher was around this is exactly what Village was doing at MW, milking the DC license to put in thrill rides with a minimal theme (Green Lantern, Doomsday and Rivals), and I'd be willing to bet that's what they will be doing when Arkham is replaced in a couple of years. 

The last true 'themed ride' they put in was Justice League and that was nearly 10 years ago.

Tim Fisher was the CEO for all of those rides that were both themed and lightly themed so i'm not sure what your point actually is. If it's that parks have used IPs for rides (and that's bad) i've got news for you - everyone does it because it works to drive gate. I have no doubt Fisher picked this up at Paramount Parks and instigated that same use of IP at Wonderland Sydney. Dreamworld does it, Disney does it, Universal does it, big parks little parks - everyone does it.

1 hour ago, Dom said:

Sea World consulted with Disney to construct Bermuda Triangle (but ended up building it in-house much cheaper than they recommended which is likely why the ride had such a short lifespan)

Bermuda Triangle didn't close because the all knowing Disney wasn't brought in. They also didn't play a hand in anything structural or anything engineering adjacent. It was already a retrofit of an existing dark ride system (Lassiter's Lost Mine) and it was closed because much like the Looney Tunes River Ride the current management considered money was better spent on new than the huge cost outlays to maintain existing.

Having said that, the cost to maintain those attractions were also so high not because Disney wasn't brought in, but like everything built in that era, virtually no one from the industry at large was brought in. Eureka Mountain Mine Ride, Thunder River Rapids, Viking's Revenge, Looney Tunes River Ride, Bermuda Triangle, Rocky Hollow Log Ride, Dreamworld's Main Street and it's trains/boats etc. etc. etc. were all either built largely in-house or were all out knock-offs of international variants. That "she'll be right/can-do" attitude of doing things a little bit cheaply to try and get something as good as the Americans for a tenth of the cost all but evaporated when Dreamworld's incident happened in 2016, culminating in rides like Scooby Doo literally having walls of theming ripped of, Sky Voyager being re-wired with thicker cabling or Wild West Falls having entire sections rebuilt. There's that old saying of "buy cheap buy twice" and that's definitely been a hard lesson all our parks had to learn.

2 hours ago, joz said:

SW genuinely I can't work out it's mix until after new Atlantis opens. Leviathan is meant to be somewhat family friendly, but my suspicion is that it will probably satisfy more hardened thrill seekers too, and Trident isn't going to be super tall and intimidating, so I'll hold off on judgement and see how it fills out when those things open.

I think of it as a course correction. There's been pages of discussion here about how parks need to be a solid day's mix of stuff for everyone and it's another hard lesson our parks (specifically Village's parks) had to learn. Skewing each park to a specific demographic doesn't work because at the end of the day, roller-coasters and big new things drive gate (and you don't get that when your park is aimed at three year olds) but having two parks so close to each other with identical rides also isn't a recipe for success either. I think there's some nuance in the middle somewhere that I hope Atlantis (and whatever Movie World builds next) will eventually capitalise upon.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Slick

[joz]

Yeah after New Atlantis, SW might only be a good Viking's replacement away from actually being awesome again - or maybe not. It's hard to get a read on where it's at and it's attraction mix is my point. Weirdly I think a couple of the kiddie flat rides are bordering on family friendly as they are legit fun even if you're not a kid. The coaster feels like it's just ticking a box rather than adding anything though. Identity wise though it's pretty easy to see SW's identity is just a park geared towards younger families, which I think sells themselves massively short of where they should be, as it should be a proper family park, not a small kids only park. Again, waiting on NA to see how that shifts in practice.

 

I famously love the pier concept, I don't know MW is the right park for it. Themed to be a different park worked/works for Dreamworld or Sea World, I'm not sure it works as well at Movie World, in the same way I don't think it works in Animal Kingdom or DCA.

 

I was also going to respond to the broader Disney thing but I think @Slick summed up what I was going to say pretty well.

[Baconjack]

2 hours ago, Slick said:

Tim Fisher was the CEO for all of those rides that were both themed and lightly themed so i'm not sure what your point actually is. If it's that parks have used IPs for rides (and that's bad) i've got news for you - everyone does it because it works to drive gate. I have no doubt Fisher picked this up at Paramount Parks and instigated that same use of IP at Wonderland Sydney. Dreamworld does it, Disney does it, Universal does it, big parks little parks - everyone does it.

Oh no I definitely don't have any qualms with using IP - given what MW is, it has to, and given that superheroes are a money printer as they are at the moment, it makes sense why nearly every MW addition in the last 10 years has used the license and I'm definitely more sympathetic to Village's use of DC than most for that reason.

But you compare the likes of Doomsday to Batman Adventure, or Green Lantern to Superman - there's no point in arguing the difference in quality and standards between those attractions. If anything Village need to be using that IP to create something far more intricate than what they have done in the last 10 years, a lot of those fisher era rides share that lazy six flags grade presentation. 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Baconjack

[themagician]

54 minutes ago, Baconjack said:

it makes sense why nearly every MW addition in the last 10 years has used the license and I'm definitely more sympathetic to Village's use of DC than most for that reason

Every major ride addition since 2005 has had a DC IP. I can’t wait for the day when we get a new major attraction that isn’t DC.

[rappa]

I think all generations are guilty of it. After all the laziest ride MW every built was Spaceshot and that was firmly Menzies through and through. 
 

Fisher gave us Justice League and whilst being the crap version it was still a decent effort. And Doomsday they clearly put ALL the effort in the theme and stuff all in the ride. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I was as happy as anyone to see the new era of Kirby and Bikash replace Fisher and Bob but not EVERYTHING they did was bad and EVERYTHING the Menzies and Longhursts of the world was golden. 

[New display name]

What has Kirby and Bikash added to MW?

[TaipanLover]

Anything after Leviathan was announced for SW.  Didn't their old GM have that as the last ride he had his hands on before handing over to the current management team? I think it's worth asking the question of how big of a part they have to play in these decisions. Are they actively looking to improve the park or just happy to sign off on any viable ideas that go across their desk from other members of the management team.

[Guest 239]

Cheers for clearing up those misconceptions @Slick. My Aussie theme park history is pretty rusty so I’m always happy to learn new things!

Regarding the Dreamworld Imagineers fact, there’s an opportunity for somebody to update the Wikipedia page if they feel so inclined!

@jozIdeally I’d love to have the pier concept realised at Sea World but I feel that ship has sunk with New Atlantis. With the right greenery it could work at Movie World but it’d probably be pretty awkward.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

11 hours ago, New display name said:

What has Kirby and Bikash added to MW?

Boost Juice truck?

Seriously though - Rivals was under Kirby, was it not?

[themagician]

I believe that was Tim Fisher. Clark came on in May 2017. I know Greg (who I believe was GM at the time) also had a major role in the attraction 

[Naazon]

So the Kirby/Bikash big plays are NA at SW, New slide tower and splash pad at WnW and the clearly COVID Delayed, unannounced (publicly) AA replacement?


Sorry, and the Boost Juice Truck.

[themagician]

And WB Studio Showcase. 
 

And any ride refurbishments (Superman, WWF, RoadRunner). Unfortunately they have the Scooby refurb to their name too.

[Guest 239]

3 minutes ago, themagician said:

Unfortunately they have the Scooby refurb to their name too.

Do we know any details about the Scooby Doo license that Movie World has? I was really surprised that the refurb was still based around the movie considering that they could have gone down the timeless route of using the traditional Scooby Doo cartoon visuals instead.

[Naazon]

10 minutes ago, themagician said:

And WB Studio Showcase. 
 

And any ride refurbishments (Superman, WWF, RoadRunner). Unfortunately they have the Scooby refurb to their name too.

Do we count Supervillains + Spooky Nights too?

Honestly their list is surprisingly long, considering COVID + DWs 2016 incident industry fallout.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Naazon

[themagician]

33 minutes ago, Naazon said:

Honestly their list is surprisingly long, considering COVID + DWs 2016 incident industry fallout.

You’re right, when you break it down they have achieved quite a lot in under 5 years. 
 

When Clark first came on he made some changes that weren’t massive, but definitely necessary. He made ride lockers free, removed the turnstiles at the MW entrance, updated the EFTPOS systems throughout and many more small changes. 
 

They have also:

- Opened WB Studio Showcase

- DC Superheroes vs Supervillains 

- Hooray for Hollywood

- Scooby, WWF, SE and RoadRunner refurb

- Added the Aquacolour show to Carnivale

- Sea Jellies

- New seal show

- New Atlantis

- The Reef at Castaway Bay

- Spooky Nights

- New slide tower and splash zone at WNW.

- Brought back Dive n Movies 

- New animal exhibits at Paradise Country

- Shaun the Sheep at Paradise Country

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I mean, Clark was chairman of VRTP since 2015 (and COO of Village since 2012) - so even if he wasn't CEO of the parks, he's been involved in some capacity for a while.